At the risk of sounding callous, I鈥檇 like to ask why so much is being made over the use of chemical weapons in Syria where so much else has made that country a hellhole.
Why was it that the possibility or likelihood of the odious regime there using Raid-like substances, but not other engines of war and brutality, caused red lines to be drawn in the sand?
Why is the U.S. so agitated by reports that chemical weapons have, in fact, been used when it has one of the world鈥檚 largest stockpiles of the nasty stuff itself?
Why are these weapons, with highly unpredictable focus and stability, classed as 鈥渨eapons of mass destruction鈥� as if they鈥檙e as precise and devastating as nuclear weapons?
And why is President Barack Obama claiming that chemical weapons clumsily used on another continent are a threat to U.S. security and global morality as if U.S. security and global morality have anything to do with what鈥檚 happening in Syria?
Maybe he鈥檚 after another Nobel Peace Prize.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the U.S. military intervention in the internal conflicts of other countries 鈥渁dventurism.鈥� But it鈥檚 evident that the American people post-Iraq and almost post-Afghanistan have lost a lot of their sense of adventure.
Even their commander-in-chief seems unwilling to use his constitutional authority to act on his own without the backing of Congress. British Prime Minister David Cameron also surrendered his right to act without parliamentary approval.
Harper has had to make no such concession, for sa国际传媒鈥檚 war machine is of museum quality, its navy accident-prone.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry argued last week that this is no time for western nations to be 鈥渟ilent spectators to slaughter.鈥� He cited intelligence reports that the Syrian government鈥檚 use of poison gas on Aug. 21 killed 1,400 rebel fighters and civilians, including more than 400 children.
But humanitarian agencies have reported tens of thousands have been killed by more 鈥渃onventional鈥� weapons used by government and rebel forces since the fighting began in 2011.
No red lines were drawn, no strikes were threatened while civilians were murdered, tortured, raped and brutalized 鈥渁s a matter of policy鈥� by all combatants, according to a UN human-rights panel. Thousands have been left homeless and dispossessed; whole towns have been reduced to rubble.
Of course the use of chemical weapons is abhorrent. It has been since the Greeks used poison-tipped arrows against the Trojans and the Gordyeni against the Roman legions.
The chlorine and mustard gas used by combatants in the First World War were terrible enough. Canadian soldiers were guinea pigs in poison gas tests at Suffield, Alta., from the 1940s to the 1960s. Today鈥檚 sarin and VX are simply more lethal.
Kerry has said Syria must meet 鈥渢imely鈥� deadlines in destroying its chemical weapons now that it has signed on to the global anti-chemical weapons treaty or face 鈥渃onsequences.鈥�
Yet both the U.S. and Russia have missed agreed-upon deadlines for destroying their stockpiles 鈥� one in 2007, the other last year. This has been reported by the Anniston Star, the newspaper in the Alabama town where one chemical-weapons facility is being dismantled still.
U.S. officials, the Star reports, say 90 per cent of the poison-gas stockpile in the country has been destroyed. But 3,100 tonnes remain stored at Colorado and Kentucky sites. Officials say it will take another 10 years to destroy them.
There was a time when the U.S. seemed prepared to commit what Kerry today calls 鈥渁 moral obscenity.鈥� War planners clamoured 鈥� in vain, thankfully 鈥� for a first-use policy in Korea and the early Cold War years.
President Ronald Reagan wrote a memo in 1983 touting weapons with 鈥減re-mixed鈥� chemical warheads as a deterrent against the Soviet Union and to gain 鈥渘egotiating leverage鈥� in arms-control talks.
The Berlin Wall toppled in 1989. The Chemical Weapons Convention was born in 1993. The U.S. and Russia ratified it only in 1997.
The current moral objection to chemical weapons undoubtedly is genuine. But it can be expressed easily because cruise missiles, drones and nuclear weapons are today鈥檚 weapons of choice.
They slaughter more accurately, more efficiently.
